PDM Vault1

[draftsman101]

Corresponding to my last post: thread559-195171, I was wondering about PDMWORKS. I would like to know how to use it. Albeit, I am the only draftsman/designer here right now. We are looking into adding a few new faces to my department. We are going to be upgrading to a server in the near future.

As for my questions:

Would it be advantages to install on my new drive to get the feel for setting it up and using it?

Is it even possible to install on a stand-alone workstation?

Thanks in advance.


B. Long
Dell Precision 380
P 4 2.80 GHz
2.5 Gig Ram
Solidworks Office 2007 Sp. 2.2
AutoCAD 2005

 

[macduff]

I would recommend training for you and your co-workers. I is very important to do so. It's a simple to to use, but needs to be set up properly.

Colin

Macduff
Colin Fitzpatrick
Mechanical Design Engineer
Solidworks 2007 SP 4.0
Dell 390 XP Pro SP 2
Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB

 

[macduff]

....It's a simple tool to use, ...

Macduff
Colin Fitzpatrick
Mechanical Design Engineer
Solidworks 2007 SP 4.0
Dell 390 XP Pro SP 2
Intel 2 Duo Core, 2GB RAM
nVida Quadro FX 3450 512 MB

 

[botnsnow]

I would reccomend searching around your company for an old junker PC or workstation. That way you can get a feel of both the administration services and check in/out process.

You can install it on any machine but are only going to be able to familiarize yourself with the administration of the vault if you install it on your personal machine. I personally think you would see conflicts if you tried to check out a drawing from a different hard drive on the same machine.

 

[EEnd]

You can install PDMWorks on your workstation and use it normally. I would recommend doing that and trying it out before you get more people in house.

There are several different ways of using it, and chances are good that after using it a bit you will wish that you had done a couple of things differently. Changing it will be easier to swallow if it is just you and a couple of projects that you were practicing with.

As mentioned above, training will be helpful, and you can typically get help with the initial set-up as part of the training. You will want to think about how you manage projects within your company and whether you want to use PDMWorks for just file management or use the revision and life cycle management functionality as well.

Eric

 

[dgowans]

botnsnow,

You can install the vault on a machine other than yours and still do administration on your machine. You just need to install VaultAdmin in your workstation.

 

[pdybeck]

I second Eric's statement. Learn PDMWorks and setup a system of working with it before getting new employees. Have something proved out and running smoothly before lots of data gets created. For self training, I would recommend i get it to start. Its cheap, and although not incredibly in-depth it will show you the basics for you to understand what you are dealing with. It would also work well for the new employees coming in.

http://v5.myigetit.com/vault/courses.aspx?menuID=4&subMenuID=0

As far as where to place the vault? Place it on your local machine if you want. Then when you get a server, it can easily be moved to the server. The vault folder contains all the information about setup and functioning, so if you move the vault folder and re-connect at another location then all the settings have just moved with it. It is no problem to put the vault folder on a separate hard drive. I have done it many times. With PDMWorks the license agreement allows you to place 1 vault on each machine. You could have a vault for every machine. You wouldn't want to do this for proction data, but for fooling around with and trying different setups its a great way to proove things out. We have our vault on our engineering server, but I also have a separate vault on my local machine that I use to try out things we may want to change. I can evaluate things on my local test vault before I make the change to the company production data vault. I also use a test vault to evaluate Solidworks Beta software and find out how to use the newest functionality before we install it around th e company. Good luck with you process. Its definitely worth installing and setting up PDMWorks even it remains just one person in the department.

Pete

 

[botnsnow]

Dutifully apologetic and definitely wrong. We use DBWorks so I should stay off the PDMWorks horse.

 

[pdybeck]

PDMWorks is a bit different than DBWorks. Each program has its place. Yes they are both vaulted check-in check-out programs, but PDMWorks is not running on a SQL server database. It is not meant for multi-site. It will not have the ERP connectivity that DBWorks has, won't support workflows out of the box. PDMWorks is a really simple data management system. Should be great for draftsman101. Not very hard to manage at all. Has most the functionality that almost every user needs and will not take much time to administer. Easy to backup, move around, upgrade to the next version, etc...

Pete

 

[draftsman101]

Thank you for the advise.

B. Long
Dell Precision 380
P 4 2.80 GHz
2.5 Gig Ram
Solidworks Office 2007 Sp. 2.2
AutoCAD 2005

 

[Badwolf]

From experience, every hour spent learning, prior to loading up with production data is time well spent. Lifecycles and revision schemes are very difficult to alter once established. Spend as much time as possible with a local vault to establish your preferred setup.

 

[Standing]

B. Long,
You can also look at faq559-1227 for ideas to look for when making your own set of rules.

People here do not follow the rules, for example #12 (Do not check-in junk names; get a part number if it needs to be in PDM.). We currently have part1.sldprt, part2.sldprt thru part5.sldprt checked into the Vault. Several plates?.sldprt, brackets?.sldprt, and etc. You get the idea.


Bradley
SolidWorks Premim 2007 x64 SP4.0
PDM Works, Dell XPS Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU
3.00 GHz, 5 GB RAM, Virtual memory 12577 MB, nVidia 3400

 

[draftsman101]

Thanks for the tip. I talked to our var and apparently we don't have pdmworks, we have the basic package. That is going to change in the next couple of months. I am working on getting them to upgrade to premium or what ever comes with routing.


B. Long
Dell Precision 380
P 4 2.80 GHz
2.5 Gig Ram
Solidworks Office 2007 Sp. 2.2
AutoCAD 2005